[…] I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day out in the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

The former right-wing Republican governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, now president of Purdue University, launched a contemptible but predictable assault on the late Howard Zinn, part of wave of attacks which have rightly been called “the assassination of a dead man.”

Meanwhile an informal poll taken last year by the History News Network, asking historians to name the “the least credible history book in print” had Zinn’s, whom I had the privilege of knowing, and his A People’s History of the United States come in “second.” Daniels has demanded to a state education official that this “truly execrable piece of disinformation” not be in use in Indiana schools.

And those are merely a few highlights of works about U.S history. And then there is Pat Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, whose interpretations of World War II would have won prizes from Hitler’s Reich Ministry of Propaganda seventy years ago.

The historians who are dismissing Howard Zinn today are giving left-handed compliments to the influence of his A People’s History of the United States, which has reached tens of millions through the world.

A People’s History was and is a general text, like William Appleman Williams’s Tragedy of American Diplomacyand Contours of American History— and for that matter Richard Hofstadter’s American Political Tradition and Age of Reform. Good history, as a distinguished professor of mine at the University of Michigan forty-five years ago, the late John Higham, is not based on the “jam-packed synthesis” saying everything from all sides that you are expected to say with footnotes and then, “this was my interpretation of this statement.” You end up saying nothing. All historians make choices as they develop their narratives. Williams and Hofstader were in their general texts as historians no better or worse than Howard Zinn. Their choices were different based on their frameworks. Howard Zinn, like William Appleman Williams, challenged the dominant ideology the conventional wisdom. His success tells us more about that conventional wisdom, its relevance, and also those who purveyed and continue to purvey it than his work

Frankly, I have my own interpretative difference with Howard Zinn on his treatment of Columbus, the American Revolution, and other issues, but that does not in any way limit my enormous respect for him as both a scholar and an activist, the opposite of many of his critics, the “scholar squirrels” as Gore Vidal called them, who amass great quantities of facts and footnotes and then bury them, either afraid to interpret them outside of conventional wisdoms or really not having any intellectual framework that would enable them to do so.

As a student at City College and a graduate student at the University of Michigan I learned to read between the lines of such works, taking what I regarded as the honest fair data from them and ignoring the interpretations that often contradicted such data.

The New York Times article quotes a number of historians who have criticized Zinn — who, by the way, was a political scientist and not a historian — defending his “right” to his interpretations. If this were the 1950s, that would be very important. Today, I would say, “big deal.” Some of these writers also have, in textbooks and other works, written broad interpretive histories of events which have had limited sales and recognition, to say the least.

It is the influence of Howard Zinn’s work in the U.S and internationally which Daniels and his political associates seek to censor and which some of his critics perhaps envy, along with his remarkable ability to beat the academic system.

John Silber, the viciously right-wing president of Boston University, denounced Zinn when he was a faculty member and froze his salary. In 1988, when I participated in a doctoral dissertation defense in history on a committee on which Zinn was a member (traveling to Boston University) the travel expenses and hotel accommodations expenses that I was supposed to receive were blocked, I was told, because Silber found out that Zinn was on the committee. Actually, this was the first time in which I was the victim of a kind of red-baiting where I had not been the target but an “innocent bystander,” and I found that amusing.

Meanwhile, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United Statesearned him very large sums of money, greater than whole departments of his critics. In our capitalist society today, this is the kind of retribution that the capitalist class most understands.

John Silber (who actually ran as the Democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts in 1990 in a bizarre election in which progressive voters voted Republican) died last year. Howard Zinn died three years ago. Silber is and will continue to be an ugly footnote to history, except perhaps for Mitch Daniels and his ilk.

Howard Zinn, following the tradition of the founder of the Progressive School of U.S. history, Charles Beard, wrote a “usable past” for the people, not for the economic/political establishments and their academic and popular servants. Beard, Williams, Zinn, and others had had to endure the vilifications of inquisitors that their works were “anti-American” because they disputed policies which usually resulted in disaster for the American people. That is an undertone of some of the attacks today.

He understood, unlike his academic critics, that intellectual freedom(which academic tenure gives those who receive it in the university world) means nothing unless you use it. And he used it brilliantly. Zinn’s diverse work, books, articles essays, plays, audio and video materials available through the internet, will continue to make history relevant to contemporary society whereas the work of his critics will be read and catalogued with the proper footnotes only be those like themselves.

Norman Markowitz is a professor of twentieth-century U.S. political history at Rutgers University, where he teaches from a Marxist perspective. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1970.

On August 13, 1898, the Thirteenth Minnesota Infantry Regiment led an American advance against Spanish forces holding the Philippine city of Manila. Their participation was crucial to the outcome of this

important Spanish-American War battle. Capturing Manila did not appear to be a problem to American war planners. U.S. naval forces had already crushed a Spanish fleet defending the town during the Battle of Manila Bay. That victory came on May 1, 1898, during the first week of fighting in the Spanish-American War. The triumph left the port blockaded and 10,000 soldiers of Spain’s garrison trapped.

America’s small professional army needed help fighting the Spanish in the Philippines and elsewhere. State National Guard units, including three Minnesota regiments, were “federalized” into to the U.S. Army on April 25, 1898. Minnesota guardsmen gathered at the state fair grounds two weeks later. A week after that, the Thirteenth Minnesota Infantry, one of regiments called up, was equipped and on trains to San Francisco. On June 26 they shipped to the Philippines.

The Minnesotans endured a tedious Pacific Ocean crossing of over a month. Sea-sickness plagued the men. A monotonous diet and poor water made matters worse. A three-day stopover in Hawaii, however, refreshed them for the last leg of the journey.

The Thirteenth Minnesota, under the command of Brigadier General Arthur MacArthur, reached Manila Bay on July 31. Two weeks later, MacArthur’s men took up shoreline positions outside the city of Manila. It seemed that a mock battle to preserve Spanish honor might be arranged, and real fighting avoided. The Spanish seemed ready to surrender, but only if the Filipino rebel forces nearby were kept out of the city.

With no deal finalized, the Americans attacked on August 13. The U.S. fleet opened the battle, directing naval gunfire at Spanish positions. Then, disregarding a heavy thunderstorm, the American infantry launched a two-pronged assault on Manila’s walled city. The Thirteenth Minnesota and the

U.S. Twenty-Third Infantry led the army’s right wing forward.

MacArthur’s men faced challenges as they advanced. Spanish units in front of them wanted to fight and were awaiting the Americans. The Twenty-Third was ordered to hold its position, leaving the Minnesotans to spearhead the advance alone.

A fierce firefight erupted. Spanish troops in well-fortified positions directed their volleys at the Minnesota regiment. Captain Oscar Seebach, commanding Company G, the Red Wing unit, deployed the company across the open road. He walked among the men urging them to keep down and open fire. They began taking casualties.

A rifle shot pierced Seebach’s lungs and knocked him out of the battle. Three enlisted men were quickly wounded, and Sergeant Charles Burnsen suffered a fatal head wound. Firing continued until the Spanish troops began to withdraw. At 1:30 the gunfire ceased and the American units occupied Manila.

Considering their placement during the fighting, it was not surprising the Thirteenth Minnesota suffered more casualties than any other unit. Twenty-three members of the regiment were wounded or killed.

Negotiations with Spain brought an end to the Spanish-American War in December 1898, but the Thirteenth Minnesota was not sent home. Filipino rebels opposed American domination. By February 1899, American and Filipino troops were fighting each other. The Minnesota unit joined other U.S. regiments in patrolling Manila and conducting operations against the rebels.

On May 22, 1899, seven companies of the Minnesota regiment began a thirty-three day mission to defeat the rebel forces. They covered 120 miles, captured twenty-eight towns, and destroyed enemy supplies. Then the rainy season swept into the Philippines forcing an end to military operations. The Americans, Minnesotans included, complained about midsummer’s boredom, monotony and heat.

Sgt. Edmund Neill of the Minnesota Thirteen’s Company G wrote home reporting that the men would do their duty but longed to go home. The Red Wing man claimed that every letter sent to Minnesota from his unit contained protests against the injustice of keeping the men in the Philippines.

Orders sending the Minnesotans home came on July 13, 1899. A month later the men boarded the transport Sheridan. As the vessel pulled out of Manila Bay, the ship’s band played “Home Sweet Home.” Fighting continued between American and Filipino forces, however, until July 4, 1902, when President Theodore Roosevelt finally declared an end to the conflict.

Frederick Johnson, a native of Red Wing, Minnesota, has written eight books and numerous magazine features regarding state and local history. His works include histories of Lake Minnetonka, Richfield, Bloomington, Edina, Red Wing, and Goodhue County.